My husband,
who goes to bed very early and then wakes up very early, too, frequently
listens to the news on the radio while still lying in bed. By the time we meet
at the breakfast table he has already had his share of the latest world
developments and is then eager to share these with some avid listener. I’d often
rather just have a peaceful breakfast and not know much about the latest
political misdemeanors all over, at least not at that point in the day.

So I really
enjoyed last week, after I had dropped off my son for his four days of
basketball camp, when I was staying in a small holiday apartment all by myself.
The apartment came with the largest TV-screen I have ever had at my disposal,
but I did not turn the thing on even once.

Neither did I buy a newspaper. I
just slept, went on short bike rides (it was very hot) - but I managed to pass two of the transport ships on the Donau-Main-Canal while riding along on the bike path,

studied a bit of my
Spanish vocabulary, and relaxed. It was an extended no-news-at-the-breakfast-table for me... Another kind of Café Leisure, although I did not actually go and sit in a café.

Now I am preparing for Birmingham, where I am
going tomorrow.FoQ, once again, and I am really looking forward to it.

When I come
back on Sunday I have a few hours to repack, and on Monday next week my son and
I are leaving for a three-week-trip to the US. When I was making the original
plans I thought it was a good idea to have the two trips immediately following
each other, now I am having second thoughts whether it would have been just a
wee bit wiser to give myself at least a full day at home before heading back to
the airport. But I had messed up the date of the total eclipse in the USA,
which I definitely wanted to include in my itinerary and believed it would be
earlier than it actually is. So in order to have at least overcome some of the
jetlag before the big event I thought it would be better to leave on the turn
of the heel. As departure dates are coming closer I am realizing that I am not
30 anymore and that things like this, which would have been no problem at that
age, aren’t quite the sensible thing to do anymore. But I will manage.

So I went
to the eye-doctor checkup this morning, ordered a bunch of textbooks to look at
for next year’s class because I found out only today that new regulations have
been passed for textbooks that might be used in the kind of class I will be
teaching, made spaghetti for lunch, tried to persuade my 12-yr-old to go to the
pool (unsuccessfully, he claims nobody else will be there, and is in a very ‘chilling’
mood right now), and am packing my bags. What will I take to stitch? Don’t know
yet. Must be more than socks to knit, though….